Wanganui Collegiate wins when cricket is play

Sam Sheriff salutes the dressing room after his match-winning century against Marist on Saturday.

It was another truncated round for the Bullocks Cricket Wanganui Long Format competition as for the second weekend in a row there was a default at Marton's Centennial Park.

St John's Tech could not muster a full team to head south, so having defaulted themselves last weekend to aid in the search for missing Bulls man Kevin Hartley, this time Matt Burke Engineering Marton Saracens were the ones to win points without a match, spending their afternoon gumboot throwing instead.

Back at the Wanganui Collegiate ground, the schoolboys and their closely-connected club Marist were up for a game, and it was the juniors who hold sway over their old boys as the 1st XI collected a four wicket win on the back of an excellent 111 not out from batsman Sam Sheriff.

Marist had made a careful start through their openers, who protected their wickets but could not open up the Collegiate field on the tough pitch with it's long outfields.
Collegiate rotated plenty of bowlers through the first 15 overs.

From 106-3 after 28 overs with a decent launching pad with Mark Fraser well set at the crease, Marist's middle order lost focus and gave up several catches in the field, with bowlers Hadleigh O'Leary and Joel Clark the recipients.

John McIlraith and Zac O'Keeffe were gone in short order, while Nick Harding looked to find the boundary rope off the back foot immediately and was bowled.

Fraser was still there to guide his team to 158-6 at the 42 over drinks break, but Marist could not string together a 200 plus innings from their lower order, being dismissed for 188.

It still looked like it would be enough as the Collegiate top order faltered to be 44-4, but Sheriff was shoring up an end and finding gaps on the offside for hard-running twos and the occasional boundary.

He moved to 50 with the team halfway home at 86-5 after 26 overs, with coach Warren Marr acknowledging Sheriff had to carry on to his ton if the schoolboys were going to have a sniff at victory.

Sherriff did just that, sharing in a 94 run partnership with Shaun O'Leary, whose dismissal with 25 runs required sent a few nervous flutters through the Collegiate camp.

But Sherriff was unbowed to finish, giving Collegiate their second outright win in the competition, and the only team to have two victories by actually playing games.

Collegiate bowler Hadleigh O'Leary picked up several key wickets through the middle of the Marist innings.